A Wiki-based Teaching Material Development Environment with Enhanced Particle Swarm Optimization

One goal of e-learning is to enhance the interoperability and reusability of learning resources. However, current elearning systems do little to adequately support this. In order to achieve this aim, the first step is to consider how to assist instructors in re-organizing the existing learning objects. However, when instructors are dealing with a large number of existing learning objects, manually re-organizing them into appropriate teaching materials is very laborious. Furthermore, in order to organize well-structured teaching materials, the instructors also have to take more than one factor or criterion into account simultaneously. To cope with this problem, this study develops a wiki-based teaching material development environment by employing enhanced particle swarm optimization and wiki techniques to enable instructors to create and revise teaching materials. The results demonstrated that the proposed approach is efficient and effective in forming custom-made teaching materials by organizing existing and relevant learning objects that satisfy specific requirements. Finally, a questionnaire and interviews were used to investigate teachers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the environment. The results revealed that most of the teachers accepted the quality of the teaching material development results and appreciated the proposed environment.